Rethinking Buddhism: A New Way To View Suffering

One of the prime directives that I sail under — and that I see everywhere in near-death experiences — is that the universe, or God, or Source, or whatever you want to call It, has a plan. There is a reason why we chose to incarnate into this world and there are rules that all of us are subject to it, regardless of what our human minds may think or do. What that means in practical application is that if we get something wrong, the universe will keep bringing us opportunities to get it right. Or, said another way, we keep getting sent back, we can’t move on, we feel a sense of inner (or outer) unrest and disharmony, until we get it right.

Here’s an example of how this process has worked in my life.

I was abused as a child, on many different levels: physically, emotionally, psychologically. I internalized, very deeply, the idea that the world (and the people in it) hurt us and I developed a philosophy that reflected that. In my particular case, that meant I thought a monastic path, away from the troubles of relationships and cares of the world, was the way to go. I spent years living in swamps, forests, abandoned houses, churches, refusing to work for money or participate in the craziness of the culture at large. For years, I meditated eight hours a day and struggled to reconnect with God, and stay connected. I was deeply attracted to eastern philosophies that taught the world was a dream and the solution was to wake up.

Basically, I wanted out. But try as I might, I couldn’t get out. No matter how hard I tried to wake up, connect with God, and maintain a sense of inner peace, issues always surfaced. My inner guidance, mostly via my dreams, eventually turned me around. They insisted that instead of pulling back from the world, I needed to dive in: maintain my inner connection but get back in the world and start changing things. One dream, in particular, rushes to mind.

In that dream, I am in a small dungeon-like cell with my younger brother, who has been one of my main companions this life. The grimy cell is dark, cold, and damp. And we are cold and hungry. There is a feeling of hopelessness in the air and I am struggling to find a way for us to endure this awful situation. Finally, I remember if I quiet down, meditate, and connect with God, I will feel better. All will be well. So I tell my brother that’s what we need to do. “We have been in situations like this our whole lives,” I tell him. “We just need to accept where we are, turn within, and reconnect with God. Then everything will be OK.”

As soon as finish telling my brother this, something primal snaps in me. Feelings that I have suppressed for decades rush to the surface and I lunge for a guard who is standing on the other side of the cell door. But as soon as I slam into the cell door, it swings open and I realize, to my astonishment, that it was open the whole time. I also realize that the guard had no ill will towards us. He was just playing the part of a guard and had no intention of harming us, or keeping us locked up. So we walk out and I wake up, continuing to be amazed that we have been held captive in a cell that we could have left whenever we wanted to.

Since that time, that’s how I lived my life, with the knowledge that I can have peace on the inside AND peace on the outside. Not only does one not exclude the other, but when they are working together, everything — inside and outside — gets better. And everything in my life has gotten better, on every level, inside and out. I still have many issues I am dealing with, but they are all improving, many dramatically, with this two-sided — vertical and horizontal, being and doing — approach.

Which brings me back to Buddha and Buddhism.

The three great causes of suffering that Buddha identified are illness, old age, and death. These are all things that are directly connected to physical, material problems that we encounter in this world. The solution that Buddha offered was this: “Life is suffering. Suffering is caused by desire and attachment. The solution is to eliminate desire and attachment.”

Other people took another approach. Instead of eliminating desire and attachment, why don’t we eliminate the things that are causing us to suffer? Specifically, why not eliminate illness, old age, and death.

All three of these plagues have improved dramatically since the time of Buddha. And they have not improved by accepting these sufferings as universal, unalterable truths of human existence, but by human beings step-by-step challenging these assumptions. Every day now we are learning more about how to live healthy lives. Along with learning how to grow healthy foods and create healthy environments to live in, we are also learning more and more about how our inner life affects our physical well being (and visa versa) and developing ways to integrate these. When all is said and done, the scourge of sickness is becoming less and less of an issue. It is finally possible to imagine a future where all forms of physical illness will be a thing of the past.

And finally, death, the greatest cause of human suffering, is also on its last legs. Along with all kinds of afterlife stories flooding human consciousness (which is diminishing personal and collective fears AND reframing death as an event to look forward to), we are also seeing concrete evidence that the harsh borders between this world and the next are beginning to dissolve.

Tackling the three plagues of human existence directly, through raw persistence, education and science is, however, only the beginning. Things really start to get interesting when you add miracles to the mix. Near-death experiences are full of stories where people successfully challenged the laws of this world. There are also tons of stories of savants, from all over the world, transcending the laws of this world. Esalen and Michael Murphy (check out The Future of the Body and this remarkable interview) have examined these kind of stories in depth. And, of course, Christianity is built on the back of a whole series of miracles and miraculous healing that are attributed to Jesus.

What’s my point?

That we no longer need to find ways to leave this world because we can’t handle the traumas that exist here. We can, instead, reshape things in the outer world to reflect more heavenly states of consciousness. We can actually have inner peace AND outer peace. As I see it, these two great poles of life are dynamically connected. And dynamically connected for a reason. Simply put, our souls have come to this world to become masters of the physical. And we do that by using a variety of inner and outer abilities, including guidance from our souls, to transform our imperfect human selves and outer world.

This approach also seems to be an antidote for many forms of panic. Since most of the panic attacks that people suffer relate to real or imagined issues of being in this world, the idea that we can confront and change the earthly forces that are terrorizing us brings us immediate relief. We don’t have to accept whatever suffering we may be faced with. We can step into the fray ourselves and not only understand what needs to change, but work with our inner forces to change them. You know, like walking on water. Or building airplanes that fly. Or space ships that go to the moon. Or communication systems that allow us to talk to one another all over the world, instantly. Or the big one: peaceful, loving relationships with one another, and ourselves.

While many of these things don’t roll over as soon as we turn the full power of our attention to them, there is nothing I am aware of that can’t ultimately be mastered by human beings.

“As a monk, you obviously subscribe to a vow of celibacy. Is that hard?”

I don’t know how accurate the Dalai Lama’s answer represents Buddhist thought as a whole, but it deals directly with issues I have with philosophies that are more interested in leaving this world than transforming it. The Dalai Lama’s response was that one of the ways he deals with the desires of the body was to remind himself how “dirty” and problematic intimate relationships can be. He drove home the point by saying how he has watched how European monks got married to one wife, and then divorced her, and then got married another, and had children. This, he said, was very hard on children. More to the point, he noticed that the mental and emotional state of married people went “up and down” too much. A married, intimate lifestyle, in other words, was a challenge to maintaining inner peace. So in the long run, he concluded, a monastic lifestyle has an advantage.

While immersing ourselves in this world, including intimate relationships, is supremely challenging, I think that’s where we are being called to go. The more we face and master the challenges of this world, the more heavenly states of consciousness begin to infuse us. And that, in turn, brings Heaven, little by little, to this world, here and now.

So I think being and doing, vertical and horizontal, inner and outer, east and west perspectives are both necessary. We need to stop choosing one over the other, and learn how to integrate these two great forces. Healthy detachment needs to be balanced by active engagement in the world. To the degree that we can do this, the more magic, on all levels, begins to happen. That’s how I think we can ultimately bring the heavenly states that NDErs experience to Earth, and ourselves…

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Quotes

"Unlike spiritual paths that arose from the ideas and inner experiences of lone, isolated human beings, the path presented by near-death experiences is emerging as a direct, grassroots revelation that millions of people from all over the world are receiving and sharing. If we explore this newly emerging path deeply enough, we discover that all religions, philosophies, and cultures are honored; that science and spirituality are celebrated; that both the human and spiritual side of our natures are cherished and embraced. In short, near-death experiences present us with a universal, all-inclusive, perfectly integrated spiritual path that revolves around three core truths: 1. We are all one; 2. Love is the essence of life; 3. We are here, in this world, to become perfect embodiments of the Divine." -- David Sunfellow

“Merely learning about the near-death experience has effects similar to those reported by NDErs.” -- Kenneth Ring,
from "Lessons from the Light"

“For me personally, I’m showing more love to others now than before I started my near-death-experience studies. My understanding of near-death experiences has made me a better doctor. I face life with more courage and confidence. I believe NDErs really do bring back a piece of the afterlife. When NDErs share their remarkable experiences, I believe a piece of the afterlife, in some mysterious way, becomes available to us all.” -- Jeffrey Long, "Evidence of the Afterlife"

"I'm not asking you to believe anything. I'm simply telling you what I believe. And I have no idea what the next life will be like. Whatever I saw was only from the doorway, so to speak. But it was enough to convince me totally of two things from that moment on: One, that our consciousness does not cease with physical death; that it becomes, in fact, keener and more aware than ever. And secondly, that how we spend our time on earth, the kind of relationships we build, is vastly more important than we can know." -- George G. Ritchie, M.D., summarizing his famous near-death experience which helped launch the near-death experience movement. From his book, "Return From Tomorrow"

"Many events in my life I experienced, but not from how I remembered it, but from the point of view... [of] how the people, animals, environment experienced it around me. I felt it as my own. The times I had made others happy, and sad, I felt it all as they did. It was very apparent that every single thought, word, and action affects everything around us and indeed the entire universe. Trees, plants, animals too. I have been a long-term vegetarian since about 18 years old and I know this was appreciated and is a good choice in life. Spiritually it seemed to show proof of respect for all life, and even seemed to balance some of the negative and wicked things I have done in my life. In the life review we judge ourselves; no one else does. The light/god did not. But with no ego left -- and no lies -- we can't hide from what we have done and feel remorse and shame, especially in the presence of this love and light. Some of the things in life we think of as important don't seem to be so important there. But some of the insignificant things from the material human perspective are very important spiritually." -- Justin U describing his near-death experience on the NDERF website

"I have never interviewed anyone who had a near-death experience who told me that they came back to make more money or to spend more time at their jobs away from their families... Instead, they become convinced that they need to be more loving and kind. They react to their experience by living life to its fullest. They believe their lives have a purpose, even if that purpose is obscure to them. Invariably it involves concepts such as love of family or service to others. They seem to know that the love they create while living will be reflected and radiated back to them when they die." -- Melvin Morse, M.D., from his book, Parting Visions

“I went into this tunnel, and I came into this room that was just beautiful. God held me, He called me by name, and He told me, ‘Mary Jo, you can’t stay.’ And I wanted to stay. I protested. I said, ‘I can’t stay? Why not?’ And I started talking about all the reasons; I was a good wife, I was a good mother, I did 24-hour care with cancer patients. And He said, ‘Let me ask you one thing -- have you ever loved another the way you’ve been loved here?’ And I said, ‘No, it’s impossible. I’m a human.’ And then He just held me and said, ‘You can do better.’ ” -- Mary Jo Rapini, describing her near-death experience

"I asked them if there were other worlds. And they said, yes, the universe is full of other worlds -- and there are other dimensions of other physical universes and those are full of other worlds." -- Howard Storm describing his NDE in "My Descent Into Death"

"The Light kept changing into different figures, like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, mandalas, archetypal images and signs. I asked the Light, “What is going on here? Please, Light, clarify yourself for me... The Light responded. The information transferred to me was that during your life after death experience your beliefs shape the kind of feedback you are getting before the Light. If you were a Buddhist or Catholic or Fundamentalist, you get a feedback loop of your own stuff. You have a chance to look at it and examine it, but most people do not. As the Light revealed itself to me, I became aware that what I was really seeing was our higher Self matrix." -- Mellen-Thomas Benedict

"God gave everything to us, everything is here -- this is where it's at. And what we are into now is God's exploration of God through us. People are so busy trying to become God that they ought to realize that we are already God and God is becoming us. That's what it is really about. When I realized this, I was finished with the void, and wanted to return to this creation..." -- Mellen-Thomas Benedict

“In one of my visits with the Light I was told that the near-death experience... would become more and more popular and it would have an affect on the entire world when a critical mass was hit and all these people have died and come back and are telling you that there is a lot more going on than we think." -- Mellen-Thomas Benedict